Mozilla sometimes dies when closing a tab with an instance of flashplayer running. This seems to be a problem with mozplugger, but it only happens with qemu/flash. Very annoying though, cause many pages do use small flashes.

The colors are strange ... I've made a screenshot http://www.ttg-bm.de/flash_ppc.jpg
The colors should be what you would expect the traffic signs to look like.
SDL manages the graphic out, so could this be a problem with SDL??
Is there any way to force a certain color palette?

Mozilla sometimes dies when closing a tab with an instance of flashplayer running. This seems to be a problem with mozplugger, but it only happens with qemu/flash. Very annoying though, cause many pages do use small flashes.

There is the FlashBlock extension. No flash played until you click on it. In case the "small flashes" are useless to the page.

The thing about sdl: I was wrong, sdl doesn't seem responsible for this, because qemu-0.6 does exactly the same when compiled with USE="-sdl".
Only thought so because I saw nothing with an older version of qemu when compiled without sdl...
I've read that qemu does support only 256 colors. Could this be the problem?
I use xorg-x11-6.7.0-r1, maybe that could be somewhat responsible. But I want to wait until 6.8.x is stable before upgrading (that takes pretty long on my iBook G3).
I use kde-3.2.2, but it looks the same under xfce, too.

Actually, what we have working under qemu is the gflashplayer.
It is a player not a plugin. I am not sure I am correct about its
origin, but I believe it was bundled with older versions of the
flash plugin. There is no such player in the files distributed by
macromedia anymore. If the flash file format has not changed
since then, there is not really a problem except may be some
reliability.
In fact I just looked at the file given by macromedia for the
flash plugin v7, none of the files in there match any I have
for my qemu emulation.

It certainly sounds masochistic to me, but that's not a reason not to
try !
Seriously if you want to go that far and you still have OS X either
use it directly or with mol. Off course that involve running or
virtualizing an OS while what you suggest is only some applications
with their libraries, hum....
I should try to make a dump of my x86 install on CD or DVD and
see if I can run stuff with qemu on ppc... I don't guaranty I will
give it a go anytime soon though.

I've compiled sdl with alsa and oss.
if I do
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER="alsa"
it doesn't matter what is in AUDIODEV, I get no error and no sound
(YES, alsa is unmuted )
if I do
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER="oss"
I get a warning
Couldn't open audio: No available audio device, disabling
I dunno what to use exactly for AUDIODEV, but both "default" and "/dev/dsp" fail.

swfdec has gone to version 0.3.2 ... they say to have improved the mozilla-plugin a lot ... and it's little better
It still doesn't do everything...and is muted...and consumes all my CPU

It's ~ppc, and that for good reason: the stand-alone-player swfplay does behave strange:
if I want it to use oss, it doesn't do anything, just opens an empty window and consumes 100% CPU
on alsa, timing is broken, it plays too fast (and is muted, I can't change that)
CPU usage does jump to 100%, too.

I can't help it, but flash on linux/ppc is still unusable:
This "update" for swfdec took 1.5 years, gplflash crashes more often than it shows anything and the qemu-workaround distorts colours and is too slow for my G3 iBook ... I fear I have to hope for the good-will of macromedia to compile a flash plugin for ppc - I really don't know why they haven't done that yet. Flash works on linux/x86 and MacOSX, so both arch and OS are supported; could there be any reason why it is sooo complicated?

But you can't force it, its the decision of the companies. If macromedia doesn't want to make its flash-plugin (and its the only flash-plugin that's worth using) open source, you have to accept it.
On the other hand, a company should see that it has some kind of responsibility, that if it establishes a quasi-standard and controls the market of apps that support that standard properly, it has to support as many platforms as possible ... or help others to develop better apps. AFAIK macromedia doesn't care about swfdec or gplflash.

You're right about java and pdf, too. But in those cases it isn't as serious, because there are ppc alternatives almost everybody can live with (xpdf/ibm-jdk).
I really use my iBook a lot (in fact more than 10 times more than my x86 PC) and missing flash is the most serious drawback. I don't miss the java plugin so much because blackdown offers a 1.3.x-plugin, and that has been sufficient for me so far.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I think that the Flash format is a closed format whereas pdf / Java are open formats/specifications. Anyone can implement a JVM with the spec (though, it requires a lot of work).

I don't mind that much about closed-source apps, what I don't like is closed formats and companies that then tries to impose these close format as "standards". Anyway, any time soon, I think all "close format" (except the ones from MS or ones that do not have a MS counterpart) are doomed to disappear.

I think you're right ... flash specs (at least flash >= 5.0) don't seem to be public. Both gplflash and swfdec re-engineer existing plugins. Hasn't there been an open source project developing a flash-4 player on public specs or was that re-engineered, too?

Flash is a standard for internet content, we have to face the facts ... nowadays anyone can establish a new "standard", as long as windows is well-supported. And I fear this won't change for a long time. Perhaps we have to wait for the china and india to show them that M$ isn't everything they have to care about...

I've heard about that ibm-jdk-1.4.1 mozilla plugin for x86 ... cannot understand ibms behaviour, for their quite linux-friendly by now. Maybe there annother petition can help ... just kidding

I've heard about that ibm-jdk-1.4.1 mozilla plugin for x86 ... cannot understand ibms behaviour, for their quite linux-friendly by now. Maybe there annother petition can help ... just kidding

I only signed the Flash petition recently even if I have been aware of it for some time. I guess I got bored. I said in the comments somethings like:
"Without Flash, I cannot see all the ads, not good for web economy!"